Huacaya Alpaca Fibre Test : Native to South America but a lot living in Britain now

Photo my own

What a lovely fleece this is with staples measuring 3 – 5.5ins. It teased out easily into a soft fuzzy ball and there was very little static, which I thought would be a problem initially as I usually get a lot when carding or combing Alpaca.

Huacaya Alpaca Fibre

It was really quite easy to spin as a semi worsted type yarn, there was the odd wispy bit which you have to expect from any of them really, considering the way I’m preparing them for this experiment. I also used some shorter and longer staples together, so I was surprised at how nice it turned out to be.

Huacaya Alpaca Yarn

It smoothed out even more to give a nicely rounded Navajo ply, it was lovely to knit so beautiful and soft on your fingers. I used 4mm needles and the result is a nice flat knitted swatch.

Huacaya Alpaca Knitted Sample

I would even consider using this method again with this Alpaca when I go to do a bigger project and just bypass the carding/combing stage altogether! The results so far have been really surprising I didn’t think the samples would knit up so smooth. This fleece gets a 10/10 for this experiment.